


By dawn's early light

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [38]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Romance, clumsy first time, karedevil - Freeform, writting prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt: Matt and Karen's clumsy first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By dawn's early light

With her elbow throbbing, Karen took a deep breath, trying to make sense of things. Matt was still half naked on top of her, and when his mouth touched hers again, part of her told her to keep going, it’s just nerves, it’s gonna be good, he’s always good. He has to be good. The other half wondered if the original plan of “slow” wasn’t actually better.

She had thought it through a thousand times, had decided, over and over again, that it was better to stay away. If he wasn’t interested in being honest with her, they should really end this. After he told her about himself, shedding light all the unanswered questions, her resolve had wavered.

Still, she needed time. And so did he, apparently.

She had felt guilty about keeping her own secrets from him. And she decided she was going to tell him, everything, because how can she demand honesty when she was keeping such a huge part of herself locked? She was, truly, going to tell him, but he was still mourning that woman - Elektra. He was still dealing with the aftermath of her death and the people who had killed her.

Matt felt deeply for her. And as much as she sympathised with his pain, she didn’t want to be anybody’s stand in. A consolation prize. So she didn’t walk away. She listened and was there when he needed it, but she made no effort to make things evolve. They were friends, and that was it. 

Except that, one month later, give or take, he started smiling again. Didn’t brood so much anymore. Life had a way of going on, and it really helped that things were not so bad between him and Foggy anymore - even if the firm still was very much dead. 

But Matt was smiling again, meeting her for coffee, for lunch, for walking around together, for information for her paper and his… Well, his thing, that he did. 

Karen missed him. When things calmed down, she missed him, and he missed her. And it was funny, because now that he didn’t have to hide anything from her, he was much more comfortable, all around. Like he was finally able to move in his own skin, which makes him lean towards her more, speak closer to avoid anybody hearing them. His movements were smoother and he seemed more at ease, over all. 

Still, she was careful. And he didn’t push. Sure, he flirted a little, teased and let his hand linger whenever they had to touch. But that was it. 

Until one day. She was at work, a million things on her mind, Ellison wanted to see her, but she needed to check the graphics for the article downstairs, and make another phone call, and send three emails. She was rubbing her temple, waiting for the coffee machine to brew her another cup, when she heard it. 

“I didn’t even know if I cried, or laughed, or what”, said Joanna, one of the new interns, walking in with Jerry, from the culture section. 

“Well, thank God you’re ok”, he said. 

“What’s going on?” Karen asked. 

“Daredevil saved me last night”, she said, moving to prepare herself some tea.

“Wha- really?” 

“Yeah. It was crazy. This taxi driver attacked me. I was kinda drunk, was on my way home from this bar. It was one of my sisters’ birthday, we were celebrating. I thought I was being so responsible, getting a taxi, going home on a reasonable hour. But this dude just stops the car and tries to grab me.”

“Oh God, Jo”, Karen said, hand on her arm. 

“Yeah. I tried to kick him, and I screamed, and suddenly, he was off me. I looked out of the car and there he was, Daredevil, standing over the guy, who was already unconscious. It only took one punch to knock the creeper out.”

“Is he hot?” asked Jerry. “He is, isn’t he? Karen won’t tell me.”

“Oh, so hot. Like, ridiculously hot. And that’s right! You met him a few times, right?” she asked Karen, who was picturing Matt, saving people at night. 

“Ah, yeah, yeah, I’ve met him.”

“Doesn’t he have the best voice? When he asked me if I was ok and told me to go to the cops, I swear I had chills.”

Karen smiled. 

“I guess.”

“She guesses”, Jerry said, turning around to leave. “I swear, if I had seen him as many times as you have, I’d have jumped him already. He would need pliers to remove me.”

She let out a laugh, taking a deep breath. 

“Karen?” Jake, another intern, stuck his head inside the small kitchen area. “Ellison’s looking for you. He says he needs to talk to you right now.”

Sighing, she touched Joanna’s arm, telling her she was glad she was ok, and moved. 

Two days later, and all she could think about was him. Joanna’s story had spread around the office, and more people started to share how they also have been saved by Daredevil, or how he stopped someone they knew from getting hurt. All those images of him, putting himself in danger for the sake of strangers. 

And it’s funny, because her grandmother - so different from Karen’s religious parents, to whom everything was a sin and believed the devil waited in every corner - used to tell her “don’t think about the devil too much, darling. He might hear you.” 

Suddenly, there he was, jumping from a nearby fire escape, or something, right by her side, startling her. 

“Stay here”, he said, and walked ahead of her, towards the dark, the way she was headed, a shortcut to get home faster. She opened her mouth to speak and took a step to follow him, but there was noise, suddenly, like trash cans tumbling over, the sound of men grunting. He was fighting someone. 

When it was quiet again, after little less than a minute, she hesitated but walked towards the dark. 

"What are you doing here?” he asked, almost stepping into the light, but not quite. 

“I’m- I’m… Going home.”

He breathed, turning his head behind him as if to look. 

“You should not go through here, it’s-”

“Did you save Joanna?”

He turned towards her again, cocking his head and her heart beat a little faster. 

“What?”

“Joanna Roemer. The girl leaving the bar a few nights ago, she got attacked by her cab driver.”

“I, uh… You know her?”

“Yeah, she works with me”, Karen said, taking a small step towards him. “And Lottie Kramer?”

“Karen, what-”

“And Ryan’s grandmother. She was going to be a hostage in what would have been a bank robbery, but you stopped that. Right?”

He huffed out a small laugh, his breathing going back to normal after knocking out… Whoever it was he knocked out. 

“You did all that”. She took another step, and he took one, too. Slow, but sure. “In the building I work alone, there are so many people you saved, or who know someone you saved.”

He stopped in front of her and lifted his hand to twist a lock of her hair around his fingers. His simple smile was not smug. Maybe a bit proud, but it told her he was liking to hear her. He nodded. 

Karen lifted a hesitant hand, tracing the seams of his suit with her fingertips, not looking at his face. 

“I can’t be mad at you for that”, she said, taking that small step that would take her too close to him. 

“Then don’t”, he asked, and it had been the first time he outright requested something like that. Since he told her everything, he never pushed her to accept, to understand, nothing.

He was really close, now. Karen could feel how warm he was, could smell him, that particular Matt Murdock smell she liked - what was not to like about it?

WIth that lock of hair still in his hand, he dipped his head towards her, catching her lips with his again, after all that time (it hasn’t really been that long, but it had stopped so abruptly and so much had happened, it felt like forever). And it felt good. It felt so good, it always did. 

Suddenly she was kissing him back, touching him, his suit covered chest, his face, and he had his hands on her, a bit more urgent the the previous time he had kissed her, he was taking steps forward, touching her to a wall and they were making out in a dark alley, with an amount of passion that was meant for indoors. 

The sighs he was letting out, little moans against her mouth, were clouding her judgement, but apparently not his. Out of nowhere, he detached himself from her, turned around and stepped completely into the dark again, and she heard him beating up the man - men? - he had knocked out earlier. 

When he came back, seconds later, he caught her face in his hands to kiss her again, but didn’t press her to the wall. 

“This really isn’t the place”, he breathed. 

“It isn’t”, she agreed, catching another small kiss, loving his smiles, the ones she was used to. 

“And I really- I really want to do this right”. He ran his nose on her face, so sweet. “Can we? Do it right, this time?”

She was already nodding. 

“Can I take you on that second date?”

A few weeks earlier and she would have guessed she’d say no. And yet, here she was, accepting, her hands on his chest, taking deep breaths to calm herself down, to quiet her fast beating heart. 

“Right now?” he asked through a smile and she laughed breathlessly. 

“Yes.”

“Ok”. Another kiss, soft. “Ok, so let me just-” another one, a bit harder. “Let me get out of this thing, and we can go wherever you want.” Another, tongues and sighs. “Ok? Meet me at my place.”

Karen hummed her agreement while he kissed her deep and intense. 

While the cab made it’s way to his address, she tried not to smile too bright, lest the driver think she was crazy, or drunk. 

If they were going to do this, this is the right way. Slow. Almost as if they were starting over. Because if they picked it up from where they left off, it was bound to fail. She needed to know more about him, and he also had things he had to learn about her. This was good. 

He’s a good man, Matt. With all his faults, being a bad person is not one of them. So, with a final steadying breath Karen decided that it was ok. It was not a mistake. They would be fine. 

When she knocked on his door, softly, wondering if he had gotten time to get there, her phone vibrated inside her purse. Fishing it out, she saw a text from Foggy, asking her to call him as soon as possible, they needed to talk. She was frowning when the second text arrived, assuring her everything was fine, it was “business”. 

The door swung open and her eyes landed on Matt’s scarred, bare chest. 

“Hey”, he breathed out, a smile on his face and his mask on his hand. “Come in.”

She did, putting her phone back in her purse. 

“You ok?” she asked, turning back to look at him, feeling her heart beat faster at the sight of him, the neon light from the enormous billboard bleeding into the dark apartment, the bottom part of the suit still on him, his chest heaving a bit. 

“Yeah”, he huffed out.

“Why are you panting?”

“Well I… I did run here. He pointed up. “Over roofs”, her smile mirrored his slightly smug one. “And the suit is a bit tricky to take off, so.”

She raised her brows. 

“Is it?” she only noticed she took a step towards him because her heel clicked on the floor. 

“Yeah”, he breathed out again, nodding, stepping towards her, too. “I’ll just… Change into something more...”, he gestured towards his room. 

"Ok”, she said, feeling her skin warm up, her eyes wandering over him. 

“So we can… Go out.”

He finished the sentence with a decisive step towards her, catching her mouth in a whole new kind of kiss. 

This one is hungry. More urgent and more demanding than any they had ever shared. They’re the same height, but somehow he towers over her, a heavy hand on her waist, another, softer, on the back of her head, his bare chest pressed against her, her own hand rising into his hair, the other one dropping her purse on the floor while he walked her further inside the apartment.

Right when she’s kicking her shoes off, he yanks her coat from her shoulders, separating her face from his on accident, grunting while he dove back in and she tried to wrestle her arms from the sleeves. He kicks her shoes out of his way and tries to keep kissing her while at the same time, he works on the buttons of her shirt and the zipper of her skirt. Karen is busy feeling his chest with her hands, moving them up, to his shoulders and back down his arms, feeling his skin raising in shivers from her touch. 

In his haste, he only manages to undo the top three buttons of her shirt, giving up on it, pulling her to him again, taking big steps towards the couch. 

“Karen”, he breathes against her mouth, not giving her a chance to respond, his hungry kisses effectively shutting her up. 

Her arms go around his neck pulling him to her, too, because she loved the feeling of his skin against her. It was new, she had never seen him without his shirt, and she liked it. A lot. And she wanted more, so her hand descended and roamed around his hips, looking for something that would make it easier for him to step out of the bottom half of the suit. 

“Jesus”, he breathed, teeth nipping on her bottom lip. 

While he moved them towards the couch, both lost in each other, his left foot got caught on something on the floor. It moved and caught her right ankle. They were too twisted around each other to separately regain balance, and doing it as one proved to be a challenge, even for his super acute senses. Still, he tried, angling them so the couch would catch their fall. 

And it worked, except that she panicked and stretched her right arm out, and her elbow caught on the coffee table with a loud thud and she recoiled, with a painful, sharp intake of breath.

“Oh, shit! Karen, you ok?” he asked, half perched on top of her. Her right side was still definitely leaning towards the floor, and she pushed her foot to maybe get her whole body on it. 

“Ah, um, yeah, yeah, I’m fine”, she said, not willing to stop this, even if it wasn’t going as she had planned. 

His hand went to her elbow and massaged it a bit and she squeezed her eyes shut. It hurt.  

"Shit, I’m sorry”, he breathed out. “I’m sorry, I should have been paying attention, it’s-”

Breathing out, she shook her head and moved to resume their kissing, even if a red light went up inside her head.  _ Maybe slow was better? _

Matt had just aligned her fully on the cushions, her leg moving to accommodate him on top of her, and was kissing her again, when his phone went off, somewhere to the left.

“Alias Investigations. Alias Investigations”, it repeated, over and over again.    

“Oh, son of a bitch”, he breathed, his forehead on hers, and Karen realized, for the first time, that his hands were shaking. 

Was he… Nervous?

“Alias Investigations. Alias Investigations”, insisted the phone, vibrating on his small dinner table. 

“This is… Maybe not working?” she said, her breathing heavy, too. 

“Hmm. I think it’s-” he interrupted himself, shaking his head slowly from side to side, his forehead pressed against hers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know I said ‘slow’, but it’s just… It’s you, and…” his lips pressed on hers on the most timid of kisses. “I guess I’m… A bit... Anxious.”

“Alias Investigations. Alias Investigations.”

Karen smiled. 

“I am, too.”

He remained there, their forehead pressed and his lips only brushing hers, for a second, while they both breathed and her elbow throbbed. 

“Alias Investigations. Alias Investigations.”

He clicked his tongue, annoyed, and she took a deep breath. 

“Go, go get it.”

With one more kiss pressed to her lips, he got off her and jumped off the back of the couch. 

“Alias Investigations. Alias Invest-”

“What, what, Jessica, what?” he answered, impatient. 

“ _ I need a lawyer _ ”, the woman on the other end said. He must have hit speaker. 

“Wha- I- What are you calling me for?” he asked, and Karen propped herself on her left elbow (the right one was hurting), facing the back of the couch. He was standing facing his kitchen, a hand on his waist, his chest still heaving slightly, looking up to the ceiling. 

Karen got up, straightening her shirt and skirt, running a hand on her own face, trying to calm down. 

The woman’s voice disappeared and she guessed he must have taken her off speaker. 

“Yes, I know I’m a-” he interrupted himself to let out an annoyed huff of breath. “Where’s Hogarth?”

Karen walked to the big window, watching the neon lights dance on the billboard, asking herself what was she doing, if she should even be here. 

“And that’s my problem why?”

It would always be like this, she realized. He does a pretty good job of keeping busy. And he said he wanted her to know everything, he didn’t want to lie, but is she willing to go through this on a regular basis?

“No, I’m sorry, not right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Plus, she had her own sins to confess. Is he ever going to understand something like that?

“Ok, sure.”

Or maybe his double life would make it easier for him to understand. Maybe…?

“I said ok, Jess. Yeah, fine.”

She was rubbing her fingers on her temples and into her hair, a million things going through her mind, when his hands touched her waist, from behind her. 

Karen swallowed. 

His lips touched her shoulder and she melted like butter, angling her head to the side, offering him more, her eyes closing, her hand looking for him. When she found him, she only felt the material of his underwear. His suit was gone. 

She turned her head.

“It was in my way”, his voice said in her ear, the teasing humor tone she had heard only a few times since she met him. 

Turning around, she let herself be kissed again. Slow again. Sexy again. Not so hurried, not so messy. 

She had just lowered her hands from his face, where she felt the sting of his stubble on her palms, to his neck, when he backed away and bent, catching her, throwing her over his shoulder and standing up again. 

She was too surprised to laugh out loud. All that came out was a nervous chuckle. 

“Oh- Matt-”

He set her down in front of his bed and kissed her again. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

She nods, distracted by the feeling of his body against hers and under her hands.

“Can you take this off for me?” he asks, tugging on her shirt, hands full of her. “Slowly?”

Karen looks for his eyes, focused on a spot on her neck, and he smiles. But it’s deliberate, just a curve of lips, dangerous, sexy, in control of himself. 

When she moves to pull her shirt from inside her skirt, he lets go of her and sits down on the edge of the bed. She is left standing there, with her legs between his while he moved his jaw, catching his lower lip and releasing it again quickly, tilting his head, focused. 

The top three buttons were already undone, from when he tried to undress her before, so she starts on the fourth, sliding her fingers on the material of the garment, feeling the button with the tip of his fingers. One by one, she undoes them, watching him the whole time. 

Matt pulls on it once she’s done, and it slides slowly against her arms. He runs the fabric on his chest, over his heart, fingers feeling it, and the sight makes her feel a wave of affection for him.

“Now this”, he requests calmly, tugging on her skirt.

Taking one small step closer, her knees touched the mattress and he raised his hands to run on her thighs, feeling the material of the skirt. 

He hadn’t managed to lower her zipper before, just tugged on it, in his haste. With her hands behind her back, she pinched a section of the garment and, smoothly and slowly, lowered the zipper on her back. When it was loose enough, Matt’s hands traveled up her thighs to her hips until they reached her waist, where he felt the skin of her belly with his palms before touching his way back down her legs. Karen started to slowly lower the skirt, watching his face as she did it, enjoying how his eyes closed and he leaned forward to place kisses on her belly.

With a hand on his hair, she dropped the skirt and Matt felt it in his hands before letting it fall to the floor. Moving to step out of it, Karen lifted one leg and supported her knee on the bed, by his hip. With a final kiss to the skin by her navel, Matt moved to sit further on the mattress, his feet still planted on the floor, an arm around her, pulling her with him.

He held her to him and lifted his head to collect another kiss when she was settled on top of him, legs around him. 

While she kissed him, his hand rose on her back to unhook her bra while the other lowered to squeeze the flesh of her butt. 

Soon, though, he gave up on the bra with a huff, after fumbling with it a while, and decided both his hands should be kneading her ass. 

“Can you do that?” he asked against her mouth, smiling. 

"Sure”. Arching, she reached behind her and worked on the clasp. “But I’d think Daredevil wouldn’t have trouble unhooking a simple bra.”

While she moved her arms to toss it behind her on the floor, he breathed long against her skin, closing his mouth around one breast eagerly, but, at the same time, with care. 

“Not to mention the stories I’ve heard about smooth Matthew Murdock.”

He hummed and she shivered, tossing her head back, arching further against him. 

“Well”, he said and, Joanne had a point, his voice is incredible. But she knew that already. “It’s  _ your  _ bra, so excuse me if I’m a bit nervous.”

Looking back down, she caressed his face, suddenly touched. 

“Nervous?”

He looked up at her. Closing his eyes breathing in and out, he nodded.

She couldn’t help it. The smile that bloomed was involuntary, a response to the warm feeling bleeding from her heart to the rest of her. 

“Well, then”, she said, with one more kiss to his lips before she pushed his chest away from her until he his head touched the mattress. Supporting her hands on his chest - his amazing, amazing chest, Karen rolled her hips, making him let out a moan, shivering and gasping herself. “You work on relaxing, Mr. Hero.”

That was an amazing sight. Those who only saw him in his formal, professional clothes, would never guess a body like that was hiding beneath them. She was almost too distracted by the way his body and his arms moved and his muscles flexed and relaxed, covered in scars, not an ounce less appealing because of them. 

She could sit there on top of him for hours. 

When he moved to get rid of his own underwear, she leaned forward to catch his mouth on hers again and he worked with only one hand, the other one clamping on her backside. 

He really must be nervous, she thought, because when his fingers found her underwear, he started to push it down, but gave up right after and tore it. 

“Oh, that is so cliché”, she said, raising her face from his and he caught the skin of her neck between his teeth, breathing hard. 

When she sat up again, it was to take him inside her, her body raising in violent shivers for the uptenth time, her fingers tightening and releasing on the muscles of his chest involuntarily. 

Karen moved slowly, long fluid motions that would make them moan and gasp, his hands traveling up her belly, tracing the curve of her breasts, caressing her thighs, closing around her neck, taking the pin from her hair and running the long strands around his fingers, but mainly grasping her hips tight, just following her movements, only here and there making a move to guide her. 

She had her eyes closed when he sat up again, a hand on her back to pull her to him. His mouth on her breasts again was the push she needed to let go of that wonderful tension building up inside. Her hand rose and caught his hair, the other one supporting her weight on his leg behind her while she rode it out.    

He let her breathe for a few seconds, pressing his forehead to hers, the hand on her neck caressing her hair, the other running from her back, around her hip, down her thigh, to her knee and back. 

“You  _ are _ mine”, he said, as if contesting something she had said, and it took her a while to remember. “All mine.”

Then, he was turning them around, lying her down on the bed, settling on top of her and moving again, while her breathing sped up again and her hands and legs tightened around him again. There she was, again. Karen rose, she flew a second time and Matt joined her on the fall, this time, and she had no voice to describe it, to express it. 

She just knew she loved it. They both did. 

They loved it so much none of them got much sleep that night. If they weren’t talking, they were just laying there in bed together, Matt watching her with his fingers and his senses while she watched him with her eyes. If they weren’t doing that, they were tangled together, a mess of limbs and lips and heavy breathing, ascending and falling, learning each other, and she saw the first rays of sun while he explored her body with tongue and fingertips, marking and branding, her head tumbling from the bed, the tips of her hair touching the floor. 

They had so little sleep, in fact, that when his phone rang, he woke up with a start, yanking his face from inside her hair, the arm he had around her tensing, waking her up. 

“Oh, fu- Sorry, I’m sorry”, he whispered behind her, relaxing again. “It’s just my phone. I’ll be right back.”

Breathing out, she turned around and watched as he got up and shook his head to fully wake himself, walking to the living room to the phone that, again, insisted on “Alias Investigations”.

She fell back asleep just after he said “hello”, and woke back up with his lips on her face. 

“I need to go downstairs for a minute”, he whispered and she opened her eyes. He was wearing a t shirt and jeans. “I need to help a friend. I’ll explain when I get back.”

“Promise?” she mumbled, because if he was going to start with the secrets again, she needed to know right now. 

“I promise, I  promise”, he whispered, kissing her on the lips, now, but she was too sleepy to engage him too much. “It won’t take long. I’ll bring breakfast when I come back up, ok?”

She nodded and closed her eyes again. 

“Stay here”, he asked, whispering, touching his lips to her temple. “Please, don’t go away.”

“I won’t”, she promised, quietly. 

Kissing her a few more times, he got up and left, closing his bedroom door behind him. 

Opening her eyes, she realized she was very thirsty. 

Getting up slowly, she opened the door and raised her brows when she saw her shoes, coat and purse, plus his suit, all scattered on the floor. They had left a very obvious trail. Picking her purse up she took her phone out to see the time. 11:23 A.M. 

Texting Foggy to let him know that she was ok, she drank her water on the kitchen, put her shoes and hung her coat and purse by the door, picking up his suit, folding it the best she could and taking it back to the bedroom with her, placing it on top of his jeans inside his wardrobe (she didn’t know where he really kept it, but it was better than to leave it on the living room floor), her clothes were placed on a chair. 

Crawling back into bed and under the covers, Karen sat her phone on the nightstand, closed her eyes again and went back to sleep. 

She only opened her eyes again when Matt walked back in with breakfast at noon, kicking his shoes and shedding his clothes to join her under the covers.

He spent the whole day spoiling her with baked goods and devilish kisses.

**Author's Note:**

> So?


End file.
